Initiated in 1978, the Girls’ Craft Centre, which was renamed as Kalyani Karlekar Shilpa Shikshalya (KKSS), is organized to empower older girls and women for training and earning a livelihood by needle work, tailoring and knitting.
The making of products range from dresses, embroidered saris, lace, and zari (gold) thread work to jute bags, carpets and various articles of household use are taught here. This program targets mainly women and youth and brings in a sense of empowerment among them by not only teaching them new skills, but also by upgrading their current skill set to an income generating standard . Some of the skills taught to the students include high speed motor machine control, simple stitching, and drafting, cutting and stitching of various items.
The principal Centre at Motilal Nehru Road functions from Monday to Saturday between 11am to 7pm. CSP Girls Craft Center is also operating outreach training centers at Harish Mukherjee Road, Chetla and Panditiya from 12 pm to 5pm.
Girls Craft Centre is managed by a Governing Body member and 4 teachers. A batch of 93 trainees was taught in the preceding year.
Within this program, the Entrepreneurship Development Program is a scale up that is necessary to convert the training given at the Craft Centre a self employment opportunity for underprivileged women that can change their lives.
An essential element of this scale up is an initiative to harness the goodwill of CSP with a marketing drive that will mobilize the CSR of institutions and corporates to create income generation and entrepreneurship in slum and street women and girls by securing work for them by way of orders. the quality, deliverability and integrity of which will be guaranteed by CSP to the corporate /customers. In turn, to the underprivileged women, CSP will arrange and underwrite the wherewithal to execute the order and the realization of payment. .
This is the roadmap for economic self reliance for the poorest of poor females for whom empowerment by mainstream education was not an option that was available to them.